Dear Author-dude, Dog here. I read your previous article on "Whither the Physical". Not bad. However, allow me to take time out from managing the local goose population up at the park for a minute to respond.First of all, some never have had the dusty fond memories you talk about. A vinyl LP? What in the world do you speak of? Are those the things in the back room you never take out anymore but which we can't get rid of?

Second, I will 'second' your comment on new books. I love pulling down your copies of books and opening them before you do. Some are great reads. Others are better as chew toys. By the way, the youngest dog is clever enough to chew on the part of the book facing away from you on the shelf, so you won't see the damage when she puts the book back. Sometimes we don't give her enough credit.

Third, an adult observation here that I noticed while up watching some late night television. Does an e-cigarette count as something physical? I was thinking we could put it in a category of 'false physical'. It certainly isn't the same as smoking a cigar with your friend on the back deck after a long day at work, you on your computer, me with the local flora and fauna. And then, I hate to bring it up, but love: is that physical anymore? Seems to me all this computer stuff for, um, love...well, enough said there. Us dogs, we could never properly check out someone new without using our nose you know. And give me a good stranger's leg to hump in the living room so that I can embarrass you, I'll take that anyday over the computer stuff.Lastly, it's this whole thing of how people do things now. Look, I go out a lot, as far as you let me within the jail that is the fenced-in yard, that is. I get exercise and I see the sun within your attempt at a miniature nature preserve, minus the nature. My nose is to the ground learning about the world, nonetheless. Learning about what that sneak squirrel is up to, or if padfoot rabbit's been out and about in the yard. You humans...all the world's at your fingertips, sure, catalogued for you nicely in an amage. So you stay inside. Not only do you lose out on cataloging things differently from first-hand experience, but you get issues with eye strain, back pains, and lack of exercise. You ought to be taking me out on walks more often to discover the world first-hand, so you can get gum stuck on the bottom of your shoe, or I can eat the gum you don't step on, as if anyone is outside enough to spit gum out on the sidewalk anymore. Now THERE'S a lost physical pleasure. The point is, you can catalog that in better writing from real-world experience. I'll be happy to lend my witty tongue to the process.Just a dog's take on things physical versus things made of bits and bytes. You should have brought this up for the book, you know. Dog signing off for now. Work calls.

There have been some famous writing communities. For fantasy lovers, The Inklings was an important group that featured JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and others. They traded manuscripts, often in college settings or sometimes in pubs, they read aloud and offered suggestions and support. Would we have seen some of the books without this group? The Once and Future King, The Screwtape Letters, and others...they may have seen the light of day, but certainly the books became better for the experience the community provided.Likewise, the Black Mountain poets got a boost from meeting and trading ideas, both at the school and then in continuing relationships afterwards. The great experiments in poetry and leaps into new forms were certainly boosted by this group being a community. To read the correspondence of this group is sometimes to learn how to write. Charles Olson's Projective Verse would become a bit of a manifesto for this group and others.Today some of us have different communities. Sometimes manuscripts are traded, suggestions made, certainly encouragement is offered. Around the internet today, writers have found each other and continue to help each other. Without such a community such as I found a couple years ago, I would not have proceeded as far as I have, which is to date but one small book. It was the encouragement and examples of others that helped me, however, to this small achievement, which, as any procrastinating and independent author would know, is the largest achievement we c

Some people wake up early to do it. Others have a cigarette, or a cup of coffee, or keep a journal about it.What's your habit? I'm talking about writing habits...due to coming across an article on daily routines of famous writers. Ray Bradbury, Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, William Gibson and others are covered in this article. The habits they have range from having a drink, or lighting a candle, to writing in a notebook every day. There are some great insights into the minds, habits, and personalities of some of the great writers. One even says he doesn't schedule the writing, the writing schedules him. Another talks about what I sometimes consider an obstacle: "internet ablutions."I know a young writer who goes to a cafe to write. Others write before work, or after the rest of the world goes to sleep. I don't have any one habit, myself, but my favorite is mocha coffee in the morning, or music late at night.Anyone else have habits? Do they help? What's the oddest habit you know of?

It's appropriate during the month which will see the release of The Hobbit motion picture to borrow it's full title for a blog post. For like the little halfling with hairy feet who went on a great journey, I was on my own writing journey, completing, editing, and finally putting out a self-published book on Amazon (for now). Cigars with Dog: Conversations and Tall Tails is now available to read. This is a collection of short stories, in an often humorous vein, of a man and his Dachshund. The stories often involve cigars, that the two of them share at the end of the day on the back deck as they discuss life and the day's events. There's a number of stories that involve events from laying down the rules about Halloween to lecturing squirrels to dealing with surgery. Please give the book a try if you don't mind a few stories involving the wit and talk of a dog! The picture of the cover to the right (--->) takes you to where you can buy a copy. So, I have not been around here much because I was off, on my journey, writing. But now I am back, and having vanquished various dragons (lack of time, unsure whether anyone else would enjoy the project, procrastination, etc.) that were in the way of putting a book out, I'll be around here more.

_ Since I am not a published author (in the real sense, in the sense that gets you in bookstores autographing an honest for-real physical paper page with something like “To Joey, Great to hear about your mole that looks like Mary singing the Magnificat, - Steve”), I never get asked where I get my ideas. Well, besides my Mom. Sometimes I think that is not in the sense of “That was a really stellar idea!” as in more of, “I raised you, I know what you read as a kid growing up and where you got grass stains on your pants, but for Pete's sake I don't know where you get that fool stuff you write about. I can't show that to the ladies down at Bingo!”

I guess it is good that I don't get asked where I get my ideas, because I would have to admit that sometimes I get my ideas from my dog, as we sit on the porch and share a cheap cigar and a Brandy Old Fashioned while watching daylight disappear. (With this, I give away my heritage a bit, as most Brandy Old Fashioned drinkers are from Wisconsin. Alas, I no longer reside in the motherland.) The rest of the time I get my ideas from going through life, or deriving an idea from some other work. (For example, my Conversations with Dog series is obviously modeled on Boston Legal, where the two main characters discuss the events of the episode on the balcony at the end of the show. I know, that wasn't the biggest mystery to figure out if you've read even half of one of those stories.)

Nonetheless, I am an Almost-Writer. Recently promoted from a Not-Writer. I have “published” things on Scribd, for free. I have put some things on my own website. And...well, that's it. However, I haven't always written. Oh sure, in school I loved writing, scribbled things on loose leaf paper...even typed some and sent them to magazines in college. I had ideas about being the next great novelist, an angry young writer, perhaps. The guy with a pen and an eye for that quirk of life that delight the reader. However, in a quirk, I started not-writing at age 22, after college.

At first I stopped writing because I was newly married and newly employed. So I thought it would be a grand idea to focus there. You know, there was someone new to pay attention to, someone that if I didn't pay enough attention to would give me back the wrong attention. Plus, that job thing was new and a bit time-consuming and seemed the ticket to a fun life with a few goodies. Then, before you know it, I had little Rumpelstiltskins running around the house, being all demanding with diapers filled to the brim and all that goes with that. (It seems, now, looking back, that they went from birth to running in minutes, although my wife, who swears she took the brunt of the late night feedings, swears it took a millennial.) And one thing led to another, one year led to another...and although I wrote the occasional short piece, a once-in-a-while poem when my muse absolutely demanded and threatened never to come back if I didn't write this one down, late at night....I was, when I woke up, a not-writer.

I had all the excuses, some of which I so perfected and wound into my life that I still use them today. You could say I am a professional at the use of some of these, and creative in applying them. Anyhow, to list them in no particular order, I found I:was too tired from work.

was too tired from work

wanted to give the kids some attention.

didn't stop watching TV soon enough that night.

was caught up reading a real novel.

was caught up in politics.

didn't stop watching TV soon enough that night.

had a dog rope toy in my hand, slobber still dripping off of it as the dog had just dropped it there.

could more easily look at the clouds in the sky than at a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen.

was going somewhere in a week and needed to get other stuff done (which oddly turned into watching TV late into the evening). (The observant reader, trained in spotting themes, might spot one of those by now.)

was interrupted by a phone call.

In short, momentum and motivation were infrequent friends in my quest as a not-writer. And when I actually would start to write, by page 80, say, I would throw up my hands (my dog would imitate this movement, because he knew it meant a trip to the yard to get fresh air), and say, “That's stupid! This would never happen. No one will believe it.” Then I would stop writing. In reality, the only person not believing the story was the not-writer writing it.

Which brings us to today. Or tonight, actually. I've lately written a lot more. Won a couple contests, received some nice feedback and encouragement. Even made some writing friends. But when it gets to putting that actual first book together...yeah. Yeah...but the good news is I think I am an almost-writer now. In honor of that promotion, I am going to give myself the rest of the night off and watch some TV. No sense pushing our luck with this.

The holidays are arriving, holidays from many different traditions. Christmas, Hanukkah, The Solstice, the festival of sacrifice (well that's one already past). The artist should embrace the holidays for inspiration, for the various holidays speak of community, of the deepest human emotions (those that celebrate, for example, the sparing of Abraham's son), and of turning points – the entrance of god into the world, the shortest day and the renewal to come, and others. In some ways, holidays are about creating – creating shared experience, recreating links and goodwill through gifts, creating memories and traditions, What does the artist do if not create? They can create experience, that of intrigue, laughter, mystery, or just that “this book understands me!” feeling. The artist can create a community. Think of the community of fans around something like Lord of the Rings, or the community at the museum of art, or the community of artists themselves at the coffee shop. Writers, using Logos, create as Yahweh did, through the word itself. Although some philosophers have argued on the limits of language, within those limits (if they do exist), the words can be powerful, creating worlds and characters which populate those worlds, and emotions that we can latch onto within those characters. Indeed, some occult traditions hold that by naming a person or thing, with the word, you gain control of it. The writer controls the world and the characters that he or she is creating.The moment of creation is the moment most exquisite, filled with excitement, fervor, and many worries. “Maybe this is it!” “Is it good enough?” But it is a powerful moment, in some cases causing many of our writing compadres to choose a life of poverty for their dream of creation. For me, there can be no words better to describe it than those of a poet, Robert Duncan, in Bending the Bow: “We’ve our business to attend Day’s duties, bend back the bow in dreams as we may til the end rimes in the taut string with the sending. Reveries are rivers and flow...”Here's to the holidays and the hopes that the artists out there create ever new worlds, and insights into this one. Some days, “this one” does need a lot of explaining!

Author

I have been writing for a long time...but recently became serious about it due to Scribd, where I have over 1,200 followers and over 170,000 readings of over 100 pieces. Links to some of those on the relevant pages on this site.